Page 41 of Pretend You're Mine
I lifted my hands my temples. “None of us deserve this.”
“What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know, okay? I don’t know if us doing what we’re doing – this stupid sham marriage – is the worst thing I’ve done yet … Or the best.”
“Stop it,” her lips said, but her eyes said different.
“No. I won’t stop it. I can’t.”
“You don’t even know what you’re saying,” she said.
“I know that I care about you.”
My words were like a slap. Naomi recoiled, taking a few steps back, turning away. “Stop it.”
“Why?” I said, even though I knew the answer.
The silence wasn’t silent. There was a dog barking in the neighbor’s room, as if voicing its disapproval of what was going on here. I could hardly blame him.
“I won’t stop.” The words bolstered me as I spoke, as if a shot of vodka straight to my head. “I don’t know what’s happening between us, and I don’t know if it’s right. All I know is the more time I spend with you, the more I can’t stop myself from calling you up, wanting to see you. Wanting to be with you.”
At some point during my speech, my hand had closed around hers.
“I didn’t intend for any of this to happen, but it did. And we have to deal with that now.”
“We don’t have to deal with anything,” she snapped. “You talk like you’re so sure, when this whole thing is built on lies. When you been pushing me away as much as you been bringing me closer.”
The hourglass of her back was immutable.
“I’ve just been trying to protect you, trying to….” I trailed off.
“Protect me from what? Other than your chronic uncertainty.”
She stormed up to her balcony, ripped open the sliding door and went out.
Outside, she leaned on the balcony’s railing, leaning over too far. I put a hand on her back. “Naomi.”
“Xander.” She said the word, my name, dispassionately to the air ahead of us.
“Why won’t you just talk to me?” I said.
Her twisting to face me was just that so that her glare could dig in me deeper. “You don’t want to talk. I’ve tried talking to you. All you give are some vague excuses and want for me to blindly follow you off whatever cliff you’re leading us off.”
“I haven’t been making vague…”
“Fine then. You want to talk, let’s talk. How about we talk about what the hell you even mean by protecting me from you. What makes you so bad Xander? What is it you can’t tell me? What is it about your dad and your family and this whole screwed up situation that you can’t seem to get through to me?”
And just like that, there it was. What I’d been hoping to avoid this whole time. And what, conversely, was tied up in everything too.
We stood there for a minute, the challenge in her eyes like a gun to my throat. And I just stood there. I stood there and let her point it at me. I stood there and said nothing.
Her smile had no affection.
“That’s what I thought,” she muttered, more to herself than anyone.
And then she strode past me.
“Naomi,” I called after her, “Wait.”
Now she was out her front door, in the hallway of her building.
“For what?” she asked. “I’m sorry, Xander. But I’m tired of waiting. Waiting for us to figure out what this is, if anything. Waiting to stop feeling like my heart may break into a million pieces any second.”
“It’s my dad,” I said.
The hallways were empty, and yet it felt like I’d just announced his name, and everyone involved in the secret, to a stadium of people.
“I know,” Naomi said quietly.
When I opened my mouth again, she stopped me. “It’s fine. I didn’t say that to blackmail you into revealing something to me that you’re not comfortable with.” She sighed. “That’s exactly my point, though. Why would you be comfortable telling me? We don’t really know each other. And us pretending, putting on this charade, isn’t helping things. It’s making everything worse.”
“You’re not forcing me into it,” I said. “It’s high time I told you all this anyway. It’s not like it’s a secret in my family.” I took a breath. “My dad’s affair. The one that had been going on for years before my mom found out. The one that nearly broke her. She still hasn’t forgiven him, and neither have I.”
Instead of waiting for Naomi’s response, I found that my mouth, now going, couldn’t stop.
“And it’s not just him either, it’s my uncles, my granddad, hell, I don’t know a man on my dad or even mom’s side of the family that hasn’t cheated.”
Naomi was looking at me like she might have started to understand, so I laid it out there for her.
“I haven’t had a relationship last more than six months. I’m not the person you want to be with. Relationships don’t work for me.”
